The present invention is with respect to a stretcher with an adjustable belt designed for use as a safety belt for a patient using the stretcher.
On transporting persons on stretchers in an ambulance, there is a chance, from time to time, of the ambulance being voilently slowed down, as for example on smashing up against something in its way in a road accident. For stopping injuries to the patient in such a case, there has been a suggestion (see German Pat. No. 2,543,473) to have a belt sloping over one shoulder of the patient and fixed to the head end of the stretcher so that the patient's shoulder is kept at least 20 cm from the head end. This distance of 20 cm is in fact a lower limit for the distance between the patient's shoulder and the head end. On an ambulance (transporting a stretcher on which a patient is safety belted by using such a sloping shoulder belt) crashing up against something in its way, the patient will firstly be forced forwards through this distance of about 20 cm before being stopped by the safety belt; it may then be that his or her head will be even pushed over and past the head end of the stretcher so that it will no longer be supported.
For getting round such shortcomings, I have, in the past, designed a system in which the safety belt was to be fixed at shoulder level, this, however, limiting the width of the stretcher for supporting the patient; furthermore it seemed likely that, if the stretcher was, in effect, made narrower for the patient, there would be a greater chance of patient injury. It would furthermore have been possible for the safety belt to have been trained round under the stretcher, that is to say not at its head end, for which purpose, however, the safety belt would have to have been threaded through holes in the cover sheet on the stretcher and the support thereunder. Because, however, the support is to be able to be taken off again, it would seem to be a waste of time and unnecessarily complex for the safety belt to have to be threaded through the cover sheet and into the support every time the stretcher is used. Furthermore, the support and the cover of the stretcher would have to have special holes for this.